The 2021 job market can be a dog-eat-dog world, and employers want to ensure they are hiring only the best and brightest candidates. Acing the interview, therefore, is one of the most vital steps toward landing that dream job.
Increasingly, it takes a lot more than a charming personality and charismatic public speaking skills to wow potential employers. Job interview presentations have become a common step in the hiring process. Job candidates are asked to deliver a short speech or presentation on a given topic.
Employers look for a variety of qualities in job interview presentations. They demonstrate if candidates possess strengths such as effective communication skills, knowledge and aptitude in the field, research skills, the ability to organize information, confidence and enthusiasm.
Most importantly, the interview presentation gives job candidates the opportunity to impress interviewers and stand apart from the competition. A great way to accomplish both of those goals is by creating a visual presentation for your job interview. While you always want to ask and be sure presenting a slide deck during your interview is permissible, the extra effort will go far in cementing a positive impression.
At the same time, your visual presentation won’t stand out from the crowd if it’s just another generic frankendeck that looks like so many others. Fortunately, there are plenty of PowerPoint alternative visual presentation software options that can help design a creative and unique slide deck.
Presenters who design their decks with Beautiful.ai can save time creating a professional-level slide show thanks to artificial intelligence— the built-in designer automatically adjusts the design and format of hundreds of smart slide templates as content is added to them.
Beautiful.ai users don’t have to worry about knowing how to prepare a job presentation for a job interview. The presentation software offers a host of presentation templates for story inspiration, as well as new themes designed to inspire colors and fonts that compliment your story.
Want to nail your job interview presentation? The following eight tips should help you to master your job interview presentation project and score that dream job:
1. Pick a winning topic
When recruiters request an interview presentation, they may or may not request a specific topic. Never assume it’s your choice, however. If job interview presentation ideas aren’t provided, be sure to ask the recruiter if the interviewers have a preference or if you should choose your own.
If you are asked to choose your own interview presentation topic, consider topics about which you are passionate but also that will be more likely to also interest your audience. Try to choose a unique or exciting angle that hasn’t been covered in thousands of interviews before yours. Interview presentation topics should also be positive, professional, and show how bringing you on board will benefit their team.
2. Know your audience
Don’t stop with researching your interview presentation topic. Be sure you also research the company, the current business strategies, and the audience to whom you’ll be presenting.
Get an idea of their levels of expertise so you can present the information at an understandable level. You definitely don’t want to bore your interviewers or even offend them by inadvertently talking down to them, but you also don’t want to present information that flies right over their heads or that holds little comprehensible value.
If you can choose a topic about which your interviewers are passionate— like how your ideas will impact the business— and present it in a unique and creative angle, all the better.
3. Research and fact check
Be sure you thoroughly research your presentation topic. After all, you’re delivering it for the utmost of professional reasons. Utilize data and statistics to reenforce both your research skills and your expertise.
However, checking and rechecking every presented fact is an absolute must. At the same time, be sure to reference the sources of your data and ensure it is all presented in your own words.
4. Grab attention
Obviously, you want your interview presentation project to grab hold of your interviewers’ attention. Nobody wants to put hiring managers to sleep. Motion is extremely effective at attracting visual attention.
After all, what happens if you see something move in the corner of your eye? No matter how intently focused you might be on something else, you’re probably going to turn and look toward the motion.
Animated presentations, therefore, are incredibly effective at grabbing that sought-after attention. Beautiful.ai users can infuse their slide decks by adding animated transitions between slides, animated infographics or even embedded video.
5. Structure your content
To ensure a clear delivery of its message, any presentation must be organized into a logical story structure that carries the topic from beginning to end. While every job interview presentation structure is unique, a good rule of thumb advises to break your presentation into three parts: beginning, middle and end— in other words, the introduction, the body and the conclusion.
The introduction is when you explain the subject of your interview project presentation and why it matters to the audience. The body, which can be divided into three or more sub-sections, contains all the data and supporting details. Finally, the conclusion restates the presentation’s primary message, summarizes the key points and leaves the audience with a lasting impression.
Beautiful.ai users don’t need to be experts at presentation design to design slide decks with effective structures. Instead, you can start with one of our curated presentation templates, ready-to-use designs that are fully customizable with just a few clicks. Presentation samples like our Creative Portfolio template or Small Business Plan template are ready to go with smart slides chosen for their ability to demonstrate specific types of processes and topics.
6. Illustrate your data
Presentation audiences are less likely to fully comprehend your data based on a list of facts and figures, and interview presentation audiences are no exception. Whether you're showing how you impacted growth at your last company, or sharing industry trends, visual aids like infographics, charts, and graphs give all of that data meaning.
Beautiful.ai users can not only choose from a variety of smart slide templates with charts and infographics, but our AI will ensure that every visual aid is simple, attractive and extremely informative. Presentation designers can even add extra pizzazz to their interview slide decks by controlling the animation of their infographics.
7. End on a high note
Obviously, you want your job interview to be memorable, and closing on a high note will help to ensure you leave a lasting, positive impression. Your visual presentation provides plenty of opportunity to close with a powerful conclusion.
Ending an interview presentation on a high note can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Some presenters choose to close with a moral to the story, an applicable joke or an inspiring quotation. Beautiful.ai’s many presentation templates feature all sorts of job interview presentation samples that users can reference for inspiration.
8. Practice and prepare
Practice makes perfect, and why would you rely on anything less when trying to land your dream job? By practicing your job interview presentation delivery, you can help ensure you customize it to the proper length, strategically control your nonverbal communication and ultimately deliver your presentation with authority.
While you want to sound confident, you don’t want to sound overly rehearsed, so create basic note cards to follow your structure, but don’t read from a script.
It’s also vital that you prepare for unexpected obstacles. After all, you rarely get a do-over when interviewing for a job. Plan ahead for what you’ll do if you should have technology failures like a malfunctioning projector, poor internet connection or lost audio feed. Be prepared for any situation, including a total loss of power. What would you do if you suddenly had to wing it?
Understanding your visual presentation software isn’t the only technical knowledge you might need in a modern job interview. Remote interviews conducted entirely in an online environment are increasingly common.
Be mindful that engaging an online audience requires different strategies than engaging an in-person audience. Before creating your slide deck, be sure you’re familiar with the communications technology you’ll be using.
Take every effort to ensure your slideshow presentation is compatible with and you can comfortably use whatever conference software the potential employer uses, whether it be Skype, Zoom, Google Meet or another service.
